Monthly Archives: December 2003

The BBC states it will not publish comments of an offensive or inflammatory nature on its websites. I am fairly sure that an email calling, let us say, for the execution for treason of George Galloway would never appear, even though plenty of people have opined that he should be strung up. However this post from Black Triangle gives an insight into what does and does not immediately strike the BBC as offensive.

There are also some wise words on stealth editing.

UPDATE: Looks like me and Jackie D were posting simultaneously. Great minds think alike, and all that. I’ll leave this post up as evidence that we abjure stealth editing on this blog. (Except for misplaced apostrophes, spelling mistakes and jokes we only think of later.)

Anthony Cox — who will forever be remembered as the author of that WMD 404 page — notes an interesting exchange with the BBC on his blog.

After BBC News published a call for President Bush’s assassination, Cox wrote to them to ask for it to be removed. In a very curt, two sentence reply, BBC News claimed they never published the call for Bush’s death — because, as it happened, the comment had been deleted. The BBC eventually admitted that they had indeed published the call for President Bush’s murder, and apologised to Cox for having done so, and for getting it wrong when they claimed they hadn’t.

How did such a statement make it onto the BBC’s pages in the first place, though? That’s anyone’s guess.

. Hazhir Teimourian is a writer and journalist, and he reviewed BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson’s latest book ‘The Wars Against Saddam: Taking The Hard Road To Baghdad’ for the Literary Review this month (unfortunately offline at the moment). Teimourian’s review is headed ‘The BBC Tribe At War’. The headline caught my attention, and what he had to say held it completely.

Teimourian is of Kurdish origin, but has lived in Britain and been associated with the BBC for over thirty years. He is an accepted expert on Middle Eastern conflict. Nevertheless, he approaches Simpson’s book warily because he believes that Simpson, and the BBC World Service,

‘loses no opportunity to denigrate Britain’.

While praising the ways that in parts of the book Simpson captures events he has been a part of, he accuses him in one place of mounting ‘a tribal defence of the BBC in Baghdad’.

The title of Simpson’s latest book is, he argues,

bound to light up the heart of every Arab nationalist and Muslim zealot, implying that all of Saddam’s wars were imposed on him by the wicked West.

Teimourian also criticises the failure of Simpson’s book to hold to account the Ba’thist hierarchy- including Saddam- for its desolation of Iraq. Simpson, he says,

‘lets Saddam off almost completely’ over the deaths of children during the era of sanctions, and ‘this book will be used all over the world as the considered opinion of the BBC’s World Affairs Editor to ‘prove’ the inhumanity of his country’ (the UK) .

This is the same John Simpson who recently joined conspiracy theorist and BBC World presenter Nick Gowing in his indictment of US forces, accusing them of the ‘ultimate form of censorship’ in killing journalists in Iraq. If the World Affairs Editor of the BBC expresses his views in this way (and there is plenty more ‘rich’ material from Teimourian’s review of Simpson’s new book to be continued…), who can be surprised that the BBC coverage is as it is.

It’s puzzling why the BBC’s coverage of the Iraqi foreign minister slamming the UN has omitted the harshest words he had for the supranational organisation. In case you missed it, the New York Times — unlike the BBC — did find it fit to print:

“Settling scores with the United States-led coalition should not be at the cost of helping to bring stability to the Iraqi people,” Mr. Zebari said in language unusually scolding for an occupant of the guest seat at the end of the curving Security Council table.

“Squabbling over political differences takes a back seat to the daily struggle for security, jobs, basic freedoms and all the rights the U.N. is chartered to uphold,” he said.

Taking a harsh view of the inability of quarreling members of the Security Council to endorse military action in Iraq, Mr. Zebari said, “One year ago, the Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wanted to hold him accountable.

“The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure.”

Now, exactly why would the BBC find these quotes irrelevant and not worth reporting?

Read Melanie Phillips on an exchange between John Humphrys and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s top diplomat in Iraq.

Humphrys: ‘Doesn’t that rather weaken the argument for having gone to war in the first place? If he didn’t have support in the Arab world; if he didn’t have (as we must assume in the absence of any evidence that he didn’t have WMD)…’

Eh? What an astonishing series of non sequiturs! Saddam was a threat because he wanted to overthrow his neighbours, not because he was always round there watching a video with them. He had regional ambitions to rule the Arab world. By definition that would imply the Arab world wouldn’t have been too keen on him. And as for the ‘assumption’ that because WMD haven’t been found, they never existed — for heaven’s sake, is there absolutely no-one in the whole of the BBC’s editorial hierarchy who can tell Humphrys that this argument, which he loses no opportunity to make, is simply idiotic? Or do they all share this obsessional delusion?

Looking on the BBC website tonight is, ironically, like looking into a battery of indignant peacenik artillery. What have we got? Let me offer the headlines:

‘UN chief demands clear Iraq role’

‘US remains Iraq resistance target’

‘Vatican slams Saddam treatment’

‘Blix sceptical on Iraqi WMD claims’

I mean, talk about rallying the troops.

Now let me offer you the antidote to this poisonous weaponery, courtesy of Mark Steyn in the DT:

‘All these institutions do is enable nickel’n’dime thugs to punch above their weights. The New York Times, sleepwalking through the 21st century on bromides from the Carter era, wants the UN to run Saddam’s trial because one held under the auspices of the Americans would “lack legitimacy”. Au contraire, it’s the willingness of Kofi Annan, Mohammed el-Baradei, Chris Patten, Mary Robinson and the other grandees of the international clubrooms to give “legitimacy” to Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, Arafat, Assad and co that disqualifies them from any role in Iraq. I’ve come to the conclusion that the entire international system needs to be destroyed.’

When a mass-murdering thug is pulled from his hole, could the Beeb indulge in a little joy over the news? Not a chance. Here’s an item noticed by a reader of The Corner.

I’m am American expat living in London, and I was listening to BBC London (Radio 5) shortly after the announcement of Saddam’s capture. The host of a call-in show was going on about how the Americans unnecessarily subjected Saddam to humiliation by showing the video of him being given a medical exam and being unwashed and unshaven. She termed it “serial humiliation”, and asked “what’s next, beheading him and parading his head on a pole around Baghdad”? It’s absolutely amazing how so many here dredge up hatred for the U.S. no matter what.

Before Beeb reporters remark on American “triumphalism”, let them talk to those rejoicing Iraqis in the Bremer news conference, as Katherine Lopez observes.

By the way, if you are getting worn down by the spin, read Peggy Noonan’s unapologetic, unembarrassed, joy-filled reaction to the great news.

: that a dictator will be tried for vicious crimes seems to be causing little rejoicing on the BBC’s 10’o’clock news tonight, and much desire to make viewers aware that rejoicing was naïve and inappropriate. “President Bush has been under enormous pressure over the high U.S. casualties”, said the studio presenter, opening a typical leading question. “If these continue, is the bonus from Saddam’s capture likely to be short-lived?” Matt Frei, the BBC’s Washington correspondent, well known to readers of this blog for an anti-americanism so blatant as to be sometimes comic, is happy to answer questions of this kind. (One assumes his facility with them is why he was given the job.)

In short, it was standard, undiluted Biased BBC. Sometimes, they’re not so bad; Andrew Marr’s recent summing up of President Bush’s visit was a very good-humoured admission that despite the efforts of the demonstrators (and, though he did not mention it, the BBC’s own predictions*), the visit had gone well for Bush (and for Blair). At other times, the Beeb is like a caricature of everything one could say about it; a double-act of leading questions and prepared answers.

We will see how they cover the trial and likely sentence itself. The jury is out, BBC.

(*One CEEFAX article on the damage it would do Blair ended, “But despite its cost, the visit may not help Bush much either. Pictures of hostile demonstrators may hurt his ratings back home”, and this was fairly typical.)

of Saddam’s capture put everyone in a spin- some media people even trying to ‘head off’ Christmas by sneering about ‘Christmas come early’ for GWB and TB. The difference is that for people who supported the war they can admit to being in a spin- a delightful spin- over the news. Andrew Sullivan is able to admit being in a spin more elegantly than most.

what happened on Last Night’s BBC News at 10pm. No one who saw that should feel the BBC gave the US or the new Iraq a fair deal yesterday.